Site search

Tag: chocolate

A veterinarian says a dog trapped in a car on a 90-degree day in eastern Pennsylvania honked the horn until he was rescued.

Nancy Soares said the 11-year-old chocolate Labrador — named Max — was brought to the Macungie Animal Hospital last month after he had been in the car for about an hour.

She said Max’s owner, Donna Gardner, of Upper Macungie Township, had gone shopping, returned home, unloaded her packages, but forgot that Max was still in the car. The owner later heard the horn honking, checked outside, then went back in. When she heard the horn honking again, she went outside and saw Max sitting in the driver’s seat, WFMZ reported.

Soares said the owner immediately gave Max cold water to drink and wet him down with towels before rushing him to the clinic, where — though he was warm and panting heavily — he was determined to have suffered no lasting injuries.

When Hudson, a 10-year-old chocolate Labrador was diagnosed with cancer, the Piper family of Irvine, California, put together a “bucket list” of his favorite things — from eating popcorn to riding in the car with his head out the window.

Their vet had predicted the dog had only a month to live, but Hudson survived three more months — long enough for the Pipers to check off every item.

Jenny and David Piper got Hudson the day they moved into their first home. After that, they moved on to children — four girls, including a set of twins, according to a story in yesterday’s Orange County Register.

After notifying their children of Hudson’s pending demise, the family came up with a plan to make the most of the time he had left — a bucket list.

The first item on it was a popcorn movie night, Hudson got his own sleeping bag on the floor with the kids to watch “Hotel For Dogs” and eat a bowl of buttered popcorn.

Next came a pancake dinner – a bowl of cheerios and pancakes. They would check off the list as they went. He had the car ride with his head out the window, more walks around the neighborhood, and extra hugs and kisses.

On the night it became clear that the end was near, the family all said their goodbyes, and the next morning David Piper stopped and got Hudson some doughnuts on the way to the vet’s office, where he was put down.

In addition to fulfilling all the items on the bucket list, the Piper family left a gift in his name for canine cancer research.

Daughter Maggie, 8, after hearing a story at school about Terry Fox, who attempted to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research — and decided to something similar.

She asked the school if she could sell bracelets on campus for animal cancer research. In all, she earned $1,300. The family dropped the money off at the veterinary school at UC Davis last week.

Cody, the chocolate Labrador we showed you a video of last week — the one who jumps up and greets customers at the drive-through window of a Florida gas station — has been declared a health hazard and ordered to leave the premises.

The dog was featured last month in a St. Petersburg Times story, along with a heartwarming video of Cody in action that has been seen widely on the Internet.

Apparently state officials didn’t find it as heartwarming as everybody else.

Inspectors — from the health department according to some reports, agriculture department according to others — stopped by Karim Mansour’s BP station and convenience store in Clearwater and issued a warning. Unless the dog was removed, all of Mansour’s food products would be declared unfit for consumption, the St. Petersburg Times reported yesterday.

That most everything Mansour sells at his shop in Clearwater is packaged — bottled sodas, candy bars, chips and the like — didn’t matter to the Grinch-like bureacrats, who apparently feared the wholesome goodness of the store’s Slim Jims, Twinkies and Marlboros might be tainted by a deadly pet hair.

Mansour, who adopted 6-year-old Cody three years ago, accepted the warning and plans to start leaving his dog at home.

Most readers, judging from the comments the Times has received on the story, see the state’s crackdown on Mansour as a ridiculous case of overkill.

We couldn’t agree more. Once again, it appears, bureaucracy has prevailed, accomplishing its mission of making the world a safer, far more boring, smile-free place.

Those who know him say a homeless man named Tim — despite his living conditions — took good care of his chocolate Lab, Pudge.

“No matter if it was five degrees below zero or if it was really hot, he had water for the dog and he took care of that dog before he took care of himself,” said Cheryl Munro.

For reasons unexplained, a Detroit police officer notified Animal Control and Pudge was picked up, according to a report by Fox 2 News in Detroit. She spent a week in the a nimal shelter because Tim lacked the money to pay for the license and vaccinations needed to get his dog back.

It looked like things were headed for a cruel end when those familiar with Tim and Pudge learned what had happened and began raising money.

“My co-workers and I, we work at Detroit Edison, and we went around and collected some money… to get this dog out of the pound for him,” Munro said.

Even the city Health Department, of which Animal Control is a division, helped pave the way for Tim to get his dog back.

“That’s his only companion. That’s his friend for life, and when you’re out here in the cold, you need some comfort,” said Detroit Health Department Spokesperson Mike McElrath. “We understand that at the Health Department, and what we’ve done, at this point, is we’re trying to reunite them. But because the gentleman is homeless, we know there has to be a legal residency, and so, we’re going to transfer it over to a friend.”

While the friends are having trouble locating Tim, one, Sharon Maceri, offered to take Pudge in until he can be found.

“I can’t imagine what this dog is going through with not being with Tim right now,” she said.

A California dog owner is offering a $3,000 reward for the return of her two pit bull puppies.

The two 10-week-old pups, named Chocolate and Ashley, disappeared from the backyard of Fair Norton’s home in Hayward Aug. 12, according to the Oakland Tribune. Norton suspects they went through a hole in the fence.

A pet detective, hired for $600, used a bloodhound to determine the pups had followed a creek bed into a quarry. But the trail ended there.

“I just have a feeling that somebody has them,” Norton said. “If something happened to them, we would have seen something … someone would have found a dead dog.”

Norton said the dogs were early wedding gifts from a cousin who owns the puppies’ parents.

Chocolate is brown and white, with green and hazel eyes and a brown and pink spotted nose. He has a brown leather studded collar. Ashley is gray and white, with steel gray eyes and a black leather collar. Both have white-tipped tails.

Anyone with information may call Norton at 323-384-1640 or 209-834-4317.

When we pointed out the dangers of dogs eating marijuana last month, we didn’t even stop to think about the possibility of this double whammy — dogs eating marijuana brownies.

Renee Morgan says her white standard poodle Saydy did just that last week.

Saydy ate a marijuana brownie someone tossed into Morgan’s back yard in Danville, California, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

Morgan returned home from work to find the two-year-old dog wasn’t “her normal, rambunctious self.” The dog had urinated on herself, couldn’t stand and was shaking.

Morgan scoured the yard looking for something Saydy might have eaten, and collected some vomit for tests at a veterinary emergency center, where Saydy was checked for bee stings and other injuries.

Morgan said that when the veterinarian realized the street Morgan lives on is near a trail, he suggested drug testing. A few hours later, as her dog was recovering overnight at the animal hospital, Morgan was called with the results — Saydy was high on marijuana.

“We would have never thought it was this,” said Morgan, who is a member of the town’s Planning Commission. “I’ve never tried marijuana in my life. We don’t even drink.”

Morgan was told by police officers that hikers sometimes get high on the trail, disposing of their drugs when they see someone coming.

Saydy — despite the toxic combo of chocolate and pot — is fine after $1,500 worth of treatment and medical tests.

Minnesota’s legislature was on the verge of passing a simple little law — requiring retailers to post signs warning consumers that cocoa mulch can be fatal to dogs — when the governor stepped in and vetoed it.

Why? Because, he said, it was an example of “legislative overreach.”

“I share the goal that we should take reasonable precautions to protect our pets,” Gov. Tim Pawlenty wrote. “However, it is unreasonable to ask all retailers to post signs at the point of purchase for such products.

“A better approach would be to require manufacturers to post warning labels on the products themselves, where necessary and appropriate. We should also supplement efforts to protect our pets by raising public awareness regarding products that are potentially harmful to them.”

The law, nicknamed “Moose’s Law” for a chocolate Lab who died after ingesting cocoa bean shell mulch, was authored by state Sen.Scott Dibble. It would have required businesses selling the mulch to post signs, warning that the product is potentially poisonous to pets, and advising them to contact a veterinarian or the Animal Poison Control Center if a pet eats it.

Moose belonged to Terry and Dawn Hall who moved to Minneapolis from Atlanta, and laid down the mulch while landscaping their yard in the summer of 2007.

“The package said it was organic,” Terry Hall says. “It was nice and dark, and we thought that would look really good.”

A couple of days later, on a boat on the St. Croix River, they threw a Frisbee into the water for Moose to retrieve. He dove in and never came up. They spotted his body floating beneath the surface of the water.